A reflexive pronoun is a pronoun that is preceded by the noun, adjective, adverb or pronoun to which it refers (its antecedent) within the same clause. In generative grammar, a reflexive pronoun is an anaphor that must be bound by its antecedent (see binding). In some languages, there is a difference between reflexive and non-reflexive pronouns; but the exact conditions that determine whether or not something be bound are not yet well defined and depend on the language in question. It depends on the part of the sentence that the pronoun is in.
In English, the function of a reflexive pronoun is among the meanings of the words myself, yourself, thyself (archaic), himself (in some dialects, "hisself"), herself, itself, oneself, ourselves, ourself (as majestic plural), yourselves, and themselves (in some dialects, "theirselves"). In the statements "I see him" and "She sees you", the objects are not the same persons as the subjects, and regular pronouns are used. However, when the person being seen is the same as the person who is seeing, the reflexive pronoun is used: "I see myself" or "She sees herself".
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In Indo-European languages, the reflexive pronoun has its origins in Proto-Indo-European. In some languages, the distinction between the normal objective and the reflexive pronouns exists mainly in the third person: whether one says "I like me" or "I like myself", there is no question that the object is the same person as the subject; but, in "They like them(selves)", there can be uncertainty about the identity of the object unless a distinction exists between the reflexive and the nonreflexive. In some languages, this distinction includes genitive forms: see, for instance, the Danish examples below. In languages with a distinct reflexive pronoun form, it is often gender-neutral.
A reflexive pronoun is a special kind of pronoun that is usually used when the object of a sentence is the same as the subject. Each personal pronoun (such as I, you, and she) has its own reflexive form:
Reflexive pronouns are primarily used in three situations: when the subject and object are the same (e.g., "He watched himself on TV."), as the object of a preposition when the subject and the object are the same (e.g., "That man is talking to himself."), and to emphasize the subject through an intensive pronoun (e.g., "They ate all the food themselves.")
It is increasingly common to use reflexive pronouns without local linguistic antecedents to refer to discourse participants or people already referenced in a discourse: for example, "Please, forward the information to myself." Such formulations are usually considered non-standard. Within the linguistics literature, reflexives with discourse antecedents are often referred to as logophors. Standard English does allow the use of logophors in some contexts: for example, "John was angry. Embarrassing pictures of himself were on display." However, within Standard English, this logophoric use of reflexives is generally limited to positions where the reflexive does not have a coargument.[1] The newer non-standard usage does not respect this limitation. In some cases, reflexives without local antecedents may be better analyzed as emphatic pronouns without any true reflexive sense.
It is common in some subsets of the English-speaking population to use standard objective pronouns to express reflexive relations, especially in the first and sometimes second persons, and especially for a recipient: for example, "I want to get me some supper." This usage is non-standard.
In Mandarin Chinese, the reflexive pronoun is zìjǐ (自己), meaning 'self'.[2] The antecedent to which it refers can be inferred by context, which is generally the subject of the sentence:
The antecedent can be reiterated before the reflexive pronoun; this can be used to refer to an antecedent that's not the subject:
Like English, the reflexive can also be used to emphasize the antecedent[2]:
The reflexive can also be the subject of an embedded clause, unlike English, which must use the non-reflexive form:
Also unlike English, the reflexive can refer to antecedents outside of the embedded clause. Because of this, it may be ambiguous whether the antecedent refers to the subject of the main clause or the embedded clause, in which case it may be necessary to reiterate the antecedent:
The reflexive pronoun in Cantonese Chinese, jihgéi, cognate to Mandarin zìjǐ (and thus also written as 自己), also follows the same rules.[3] This was also the case in Classical Chinese, which simply used 己[4] (Old Chinese: *kəʔ[5]).
In Danish, there is also a difference between normal and reflexive genitives:
In the latter case, "sin" is a case of a reflexive possessive pronoun, i.e. it reflects that the subject in the phrase (Anna) owns the object (the book).
The Esperanto reflexive pronoun is si, or sia for the possessive (to which can be added -j for plural agreement and -n for direct object).
In French, the main reflexive pronoun is 'se', with its indefinite form soi.
There are also intensifying reflexive pronouns, such as moi-même, toi-même, lui-même/elle-même/soi-même, nous-mêmes, vous-mêmes and eux-mêmes/elles-mêmes, exactly similar in meaning (but not in use) to myself, yourself….
There is only one reflexive pronoun in Icelandic and that is the word sig. It does not differ between genders nor number.
The reflexive pronouns are as such:
| Singular and plural | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Masculine | Feminine | Neuter | |
| Nominative | (hann/hún/það/þeir/þær/þau) ("he/she/it/they") | ||
| Accusative | sig | ||
| Dative | sér | ||
| Genitive | sín | ||
The reflexive pronoun refers to the third person:
In the Japanese language, jibun 自分 and jibunjishin 自分自身 are reflexive pronouns that correspond roughly to 'herself' and 'himself'. They differ from English in some ways; for example, jibun and jibunjishin do not have to agree in gender or number where English reflexives do. Jibun can further be bound locally or long distance where English reflexives must always occur locally. Although both English and Japanese pronouns must be c-commanded by their antecedents, because of the syntactic structure of Japanese, long distance binding is allowed.
In the 1st and 2nd person, Latin uses the ordinary oblique forms of the personal pronouns as reflexive pronouns. In the 3rd person, Latin uses the special reflexive pronoun se, which is the same for all genders and numbers, and declined in all cases except the nominative and the vocative.
| Singular or Plural | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Masculine | Feminine | Neuter | |
| Nominative | — | ||
| Vocative | — | ||
| Accusative | sē, sēsē | ||
| Genitive | suī | ||
| Dative | sibi | ||
| Ablative | sē, sēsē | ||
| Locative | sē, sēsē | ||
| Reflexive pronouns | Examples |
|---|---|
| себе/ sebe (himself, herself) се/ se (self) |
Тој пиша на самиот себе си. / Toj piša na samiot sebe si/. — He wrote to himself. Јас се мијам глава./ Jas se mijam glava. — I [ref. pron.] wash my head. |
(Novial is a constructed language, mostly based on Romance languages.)
There are two ways to make a reflexive sentence in Portuguese. The first way is adding the reflexive pronoun (me, te, se, nos - also vos). The second form is used to stress the reflexive action, especially when using the word "mesmo" (self)
The pronoun sebya universally means "oneself"/"myself"/"himself", etc. It is inflected depending on the case.
When used to indicate that the person is the direct object of the verb, one uses the accusative form, sebya. (It does not have a nominative form.)
Emphasized forms are "sam sebya" - masculine, "sama sebya" - feminine, "sami sebya" - plural.
In addition, the reflective pronoun sebya gave rise the reflective affix -sya (-ся) used to generate reflexive verbs:
There are certain stylistic differences between the three usages, despite being rendered in the same way in English.
When the person is not a direct object of the verb, other cases are used:
Compare:
Russian has a reflexive possessive as well.
Because of the existence of reflexive forms, the use of a non-reflexive pronoun indicates a subject that is different from the object. If it is impossible, the sentence is invalid or at least irregular:
In Spanish, the reflexive pronouns are: me/nos (first person singular/plural), te/os (second person) or se (third person). In Latin America, "os" is not used, being replaced by "se" for the pronoun "ustedes". For clarity, there are optional intensifying adjuncts for reflexive pronouns, accompanied by "mismo/a" (masculine and feminine forms for "self"). These are not strictly adjuncts: "si mismo/a" (instead of "se"), "ti mismo/a" (in the River Plate region, it is replaced by "vos mismo/a"), but "mi mismo" — that is, they usually postpend the genitive.
Examples with "wash oneself":
Note that the indirect object "le"/"les" do not override "se" in the reflexive.